Becoming One with the Dragon
The weirdest anime of the season has offered me a new perspective on the writing experience. Hisone and Masotan tells the story of Hisone, a young woman in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force who becomes a "D-Pilot," someone who flies a dragon (her specific dragon is named Masotan). In the world of the story, dragons are real, and are a vital part of Japan's survival as a nation. But the public can't know about them, so the JASDF disguises them as military planes when they take to the air. Unlike in most dragon stories, though, Hisone and the other D-Pilots don't get to ride on top of the dragons. Oh no, that would be too mundane. In this story, the dragons swallow the D-Pilots, who must then fly the mission from inside the dragons' guts (which somehow transform into a hi-tech cockpit display). When the mission is over, the dragons obligingly barf their D-Pilots back out. Yes, I know it's silly, and I'm leaving out a number of problemati